In a major counter-terrorism operation along the Irish border, Ireland’s national police force, Gardaí, has intercepted a vehicle carrying a fully assembled explosive device that authorities believe was en route to an attack in Northern Ireland. The interception unfolded shortly after 3 p.m. local time on Wednesday, when officers pulled the car over along the N2 highway in the vicinity of Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, a region that sits just kilometers from the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Following the stop, two suspects were taken into police custody. The vehicle’s driver, a woman in her 20s, was arrested immediately during the Wednesday afternoon operation, while a second suspect, a man in his 40s, was apprehended later in connection with the plot. Law enforcement officials confirmed the operation was explicitly targeted at curbing dissident republican activity, a long-running source of regional security tensions in the border area.
Irish national public broadcaster RTÉ cited official sources confirming the explosive discovered in the vehicle was fully completed and primed for an imminent attack. After the vehicle was stopped, Gardaí called in the Irish Defence Forces’ Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team to conduct a full examination of the device and the vehicle. In an official public statement released Wednesday, Gardaí declined to share details of the EOD team’s findings, noting that the outcome of the examination is being withheld for operational security purposes. The incident comes amid ongoing security cooperation between Irish and Northern Irish law enforcement to disrupt planned attacks by dissident groups that oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of conflict in the region.